Indians drop title game heartbreaker

It wasthe two best field hockey teams in District 1 Class AAA going at it hard, firstfor 60 minutes of regulation,then another 21minutes of overtimebefore No. 2 Central Bucks South finally broke through in the secondseven-on-seven overtime period to edge No. 4 Unionville and claim theDistrict 1 crown.

“It was a great game,” said Unionville coach Beth Lynch. “Twoovertimes takes a lotout of you,so w’re going to have to rest up,shake it off and get back to it Wednesday.”

Unionville struck first. With just under 22minutes to play in thefirst half, Annabeth Donovan grabbed a ball, brought it up near thecircle, and fired off a pass to Erin Karcher at the top of the circleon the right side. With Izzy McDonough waiting on the pads, Karcherlet loose with a bullet. Though her teammate was in position, Karcher

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didn’t need help as her shot found the back of the cage for the early1-0 lead.

The lead was short-lived,however, as South needed less than a minuteto answer back, with Emily Kligett scoring the equalizer.Despite South holding a fairly significant statistical advantage,holding the edge in both shots (5-2) and corners (7-0), the teamsremained knotted up going into the halftime break.

“It’s sometimes tough in this cold weather to be as accurate as you’dlike,” said South coach Jeff Harding.”Our objective is to put it ontarget,but their goalie came up with some beautiful savesand theirteam in general was tough around the cage.”

No one was tougher around the cage than Unionville’s Katja Hansen,whoseemed to come up with just about every defensive play within 20 yards of her.

“Katja is really just a stone wall back there for us,” said Donovan.“We don’t have to worry about much when she’s back there. Plus she’salways the one to lighten the mood, even in the toughest times.”

Unionville creeped back into the statistical race, forcing fivecorners and getting off 13 shots on goal after the start of the secondhalf and in overtime, but just couldn’t dent the scoreboard thanks tosome fantastic play in the cage by Sarah Zeszotarski (10 saves).

“Our goalie from last year was injuredand hasn’t been able to play,forcing Sarah to come in as a freshman,” said Harding. “She has reallystepped up for us this year.”

South forced three corners in the first overtime, but failed toconvert any of them,and the game went to its second extra session.The end finally came with Megan Hamilton notching the game-winner forSouth a little over six minutes into the second overtime.

“The game went two overtimes; we obviously fought hard the wholeway,” said Donovan. “It was just two good teams,and they got the edgetoday. But it’s just a loss, not the end of the season. We just haveto get it done at states.”

Unionville kicks off its state tournament Wednesday afternoon with afirst round match-up against Hempfield,the third-place finisher fromDistrict 3.The game will be played at Central Bucks West High School,with a start time of 1:00 P.M.

“We took a couple tough losses early in the year, and turned it aroundto go undefeated in the league,” said Donovan. “We’re pretty good athandling adversity. I’m not too worried about us being able to justlet this slide off our backs and get back to business Wednesday.”